Happier Times
by Kount Xero
Summary: Eleven drabbles about the inhabitants of Happier Times Care Center - a brief glimpse at each one.  Rated for drug content and swearing.  Reviews are much, MUCH appreciated.
1. A Glass of Miranda and Ghost

**_"Happier Times"_**

_Author's Note: I don't own anything. The following sets of drabbles are to help me breach through a massive writer's block. Each chapter title has a connection to the character's name, condition or drug slang. For the opening, however, I will say a little-known (apparently) fact: Ghost's name is Miranda, I didn't make that part up._

**1. A Glass of Miranda and Ghost**

They call them Miranda Rights in the 'states, so Ghost has to wonder why she isn't allowed to be subjected to them, Canada isn't that far. She's heard Alice talk on the phone about them, something about habies and corpses, but she doesn't understand.

She doesn't even know why the Miranda Rights would be called that. They don't even know her, hell, she barely remembers that her name used to be Miranda. She's Ghost now, and as a Ghost, doesn't think she'd have rights. You can't handcuff ghosts.

Barbara wheezes, Barbara breathes. Barbara looks at her with big blue eyes and Barbara seethes, and Ghost wonders if she has Miranda Rights, but the answer is an obvious yes.

If Barbara has Miranda, and Barbara has _had_ Miranda enough to turn her into Ghost, then sure, she has Miranda Rights.


	2. Alice Severson in Skagland

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**2. Alice Severson in Skagland**

Alice keeps a syringe in her drawer; a syringe and some skag next to it. A spoon, one she used to use, and a zippo lighter, the cheap kind and a small wad of cotton.

She keeps it there and spends her entire day fully aware of its existence, its presence and proximity. Places around the care facility are measured in the distance to it. The syringe is how she maps out her world, how she makes sense of it. It is her reference point to everything, and everything else is angled in accordance with the syringe.

This is her world, this land of skag-awareness and a constant desire to scratch the itch in her arm. And Alice spends every day of that world tip-toeing the mouth of the rabbit hole, wondering when the time will come for a wrong step and one final fall.


	3. BethAnnphetamine

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**3. Beth-Annphetamine**

Beth-Ann remembers the alternative name of her starter vice. Tweak, they called it. She remembers thinking, well, that's good, because she wants to be _tweaked_, alright.

One shard of glass before the bars of this little prison. The windows have bars outside of them, so for Beth-Ann, it all adds up to jack shit in particular. Her time is measured hit-to-hit, just like how it used to be measured by classes, homework and extra-curriculars. Of course, hit-to-hit means her time is also measured in between Tyler's cock and Tyler's cock, but that's beside the point.

Her life is an unending routine that is tweaked for the worst before she snorts on what Tyler thinks is her amount in a good blowjob or a nice fuck, and tweaked for the better after that. Rinse during the comedown, repeat on withdrawal. Nothing exists outside of this tweaking, nothing is stable.

She remembers asking what it was, back in that no-return moment. Asking what it was just to be sure. Meth, they said. Sounds like _mess_, she remembers thinking.

She took, lit the lighter, inhaled and made a mess of things.


	4. Doctor Brookner's Scripts

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**4. Doctor Brookner's Script**

Candice Brookner knows that she has no first name to those around her, except maybe Alice, who always tries to be everyone's best friend – she never succeeds, Candice has observed, but tries because she doesn't know what the fuck else to do.

Candice also knows that she has a scar running down her left forearm, and another one across her stomach. The one on her stomach is the first, where she lost the ability to create life, where they cut the mutated remains of her child from her and sewn the empty, lifeless womb shut, forever.

The other is from when she decided that methadone wasn't a viable treatment to being a fucking smackhead, which she only was because it made sense to let something from the outside fuck her insides up rather than the other way around, and implemented a radical form of detox to find her way out.

She's better now, but every once in a while, when Alice sends a little prescription request to her, she writes the script a little fatter than it should be and keeps some for herself. There's nothing wrong with a little hit every now and again - it's all in moderation.

Because every day, Candice Brookner puts on a smile, tries optimism as a route to the best-case scenario and watches the girls, all of whom have no clear reason not to be her daughter, or at least the equivalent of her daughter, eat away at themselves for one reason or another. That's when she writes those fat scripts.


	5. Koral Down Under

**_"Hapier Times"_  
><strong>

**5. Koral Down Under**

Koral doesn't really have a home, not really and not anymore. She remembers having one that isn't inhabited by the junkies, whores and lies – but what that home taught her, just like this one keeps teaching her every day, is that you can't choose your home. You can't choose your parents either, but if she had a choice, she wouldn't choose the Happier Times Care Center as both home and parent.

The happier part is a joke, because there isn't happy to begin with, so there is no foundation for that comparison. Here, it isn't who you choose to know, hurt, ridicule, abuse and generally treat like shit. Here, it's just who you know and who you blow.

Tyler is Koral's case-in-point. She can match him blow for blow, a little something for a little something more and that's about as close to happy as happy can be. Anyone other than Tyler have nothing to offer her, so she exercises choice there by opting out. She opts for nobody, because in the end, the rehab center is her home, and if she can't choose it, she'll choose her guests, and so far, nobody's welcome.

Koral doesn't really have a home, but the care center is a home of sorts, and it has her.


	6. Marcus

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**6****. Marcus**

Marcus often feels like the only sane man.

To him, this half-burned lunatic pit is nothing but a job, something to pay his bills and help him think he's done something for someone, helped in some way. A place to ease his conscience and make him comfortable for the night.

He keeps to the rules, doesn't get familiar and does what he's supposed to do. If any of the inhabitants are at least slightly touched by the routine he maintains, he's happy, because that is the absolute limit of what can be done.


	7. Rocky Never Barks

**_"Happier Times"_**

**7. Rocky Never Barks**

Rocky runs. Rocky plays. Rocky has warmer and colder days. No matter what the case, Rocky knows that come morning, the blonde girl will let him into the corridors where it's warm and he can walk around freely. As long as he doesn't piss out in the open or anything like that, everybody loves him.

At nights, sometimes, Rocky picks the scent of nastier, meaner predators and cowers in a corner. He can't help that he's small, if he was bigger it wouldn't be a problem. Hell, it isn't a problem even when dogs significantly bigger than him come around... it's just that these predators aren't dogs. They aren't wolves either. So he doesn't bark, in fact, Rocky never barks, because barking draws those predators to him, and he doesn't want that.

They are something he can't quite make out, and the unknown of it scares Rocky. So he stays and shivers until morning comes, and he can run and play with the blonde girl again.


	8. The Three Unknowns

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**8. The Three Unknowns**

There are three residents in the care center, who appear to have always been there. They are always there, have always been there and, will always be there. The life cycle of an integrating piece is a slow but sure one: addiction, downfall, rehabilitation, remission, relapse, rehabilitation, remission, adjustment and finally, integration.

They are those pieces.

They are three, and they have seen every other group of patients pass by, untouched by their passing or the residues they leave behind, yet somehow unaffected. They stick to themselves, never mingling, keeping the others away – as if the dirty needles and burnt-out crack pipes now come at them in the form of people, tempt them in the form of dysfunctional friendships, more dysfunctional than the ones they have now with each other.

The others notice them, always, and the only thing the others remember of them is their permanence, their fixated position, their factuality. They are _there, _always have been and always will be, watching the others sieve through what is their home as much as they are it's, untouched by their passing and permanent.

Nobody knows or remembers their names.


	9. Tyler's Keepers

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**9. Tyler's Keepers**

Tyler is a keeper, but that's not who he is, that's what he does. He has other titles, of course, one being _caretaker_. He takes care of more than one thing in the Happier Times Care Center.

Tyler has to keep balance and order in the hospital. Things shouldn't get confused. Everything comes at a price, you pay to play and if you lose, you lose yourself – that's how it is, and that's how he keeps it.

Tyler also keeps secrets. The secret of where the actual confiscated drugs are, on Alice's orders, no less, is an important one.

Tyler always keeps time. His eye is always on the clock and punctuality is important, because sometimes, calls have to be close and so are cuts. He keeps distance and proportion along with time, and that way, he can keep tabs on everyone in the facility and see when one of the beggars will come his way. They always come and ask him for some of the things he keeps. Everything comes at a price and everything is attainable, but beggars can't be choosers, and it's always Tyler's keepers.


	10. Winnie the Fool

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**10. Winnie the Fool**

Winnie wishes she can suffer, she really does. It would beat the living shit out of the numbness, the utter black hole of non-emotion that she feels, or doesn't feel, all the damn time. Winnie misses what her old friends make her feel. She remembers and loves all of them, if she can indeed feel love: Casper the Ghost, Carrie, Adam, Belushi and sometimes, on milder days, Mary Jane and Angie. Then there was Lucy, Button, Big Chief, Tweeker...

Winnie felt something with each of those friends, each of them gave her something. Now, in the care center, she feels nothing, so she turns to her one friend left: Biro.

Now, every day, she creates new lives of suffering and pain on the page and drifts through them. It's like they are passing all around her and she is dumbstruck, watching each one and living each one. Every strike, every bruise and wound, she imagines and makes believe.

Sometimes, she takes her hidden swiss army knife and creates her fiction, realizes it, but only where the nurses won't see. Winnie cuts swathes across her flesh and mind, and it always feels like drilling holes into the void.

So she tries again, deeper and further this time, trying to find that point where the bottom of the barrel will let her feel – but they always drag her back to the sane and secure, where nothing feels and everything feels like nothing.


	11. Brigitte Fitzgerald

**_"Happier Times"_  
><strong>

**11. Brigitte Fitzgerald**

Brigitte isn't really addicted to anything. She needs the monkshood, because the Curse is slowly consuming her. But that's not an addiction. She needs the monkshood extract to stay alive, so unless she is addicted to being alive, she isn't addicted to anything. She has other vices she can confess to.

Brigitte is addicted to death. That particular drug was first bridged into her by her sister, Ginger, and she's been hooked ever since. Corpses, tombstones, six foot deep, tombs and coffins, funeral dresses, dead flowers on the water, cypress trees and the marble polish... it sets her teeth on edge.

Brigitte is addicted to her sister, Ginger. She sees her, even though Ginger is dead – maybe that's because Ginger is in her bloodstream. With every beat of her cursed heart, Ginger courses through her veins, the veins she often cuts to release that addiction.

Brigitte is addicted to the memory of Sam. It's not as clear as she wishes it was and she doesn't have many memories to go on. All she remembers is a brief discussion about Z-grade horror movies over a monkshood cook-up. His flowered, yellow shirt. Chestnut hair. His lopsided smile and ever-present cigarette. His voice and how she used to see him, too, just like she always sees Ginger.

Brigitte's addictions all have one thing in common: she needs to survive in order to feed them all. She needs to feel alive in order to think of suicide; she needs to live to mourn Ginger's death and passing through her veins; she needs to make it, in order to be able to say that she did right by Sam, who only ever did right by her.

In the end, she guesses, she _is_ addicted to monkshood, because it's the only thing keeping her alive... and the withdrawal is slowly killing her, so the only other addiction she has is for finding a way out of there. But she doesn't have the means to escape, so she lies in her bed, lost in all her addictions and wonders how long she has left.


End file.
